Marin Tender Tracks Tues. March 22, 2016 Day 47

Waxing Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Michelle needed to be home with her son who fell ill again.  We missed her!
Even though she was gone we did wind op having a really fun day. We went to our familiar place and had fire, popcorn, circle, Easter story, hammering, digging with shovels, finding more Newts, playing and changing clothes and taking more responsibility for getting wet and changing all their own clothes.
When the day began I shared how we have a need to really work together since there was just me and 7 of them.  They took that all to heart and really did great with that need.
As I was making the base part of the fire they filled a bag of dry wood that they always get under the water fall run.  They are very familiar with gathering under there and this time they really brought back a lot!   They sang the fire awake once it got going. It got going though by each one of them stricking a match. For some it was the first time and for others they had done this before.  Alara did not try though as the fire had already begun and she was uncomfortable lighting a match after that. Velia started but got scared.  The rest were right into it.  We went into all the safety aspects before and they were mindful for their safety.  The pop corn popped beautifully and they were happy with that!  We got in our circle and I read half of the story of The Country Bunny that most of them knew.
After all that we went back to building up the fire.  All the girls but Alara went to the bathroom to poop and pee. Layton, Rhett and Aaron stayed and began hammering nails into an old log and the store bought fire wood that they are used to playing and building with.  The three of them were delighted to be hammer, hammer, hammering!  And Layton, she was really into it!    When Velia, Ione, Alara and Ariel came back they too got  shovels and hammers and began building. They all worked together to make some kind of bridge.
Then a game away from the hammers happened. At first Ariel and Alara found garbage and they picked that up and put it into the Earth Bag. The the other girls wanted to play. Io and Velia were in their own games and wanted to play with the others but there was some exclusion going on.  That was walked through and the air shifted for them all.
Lunch happened around the fire too. Close to the end of the day we were going to draw with pictures for Michelle’s son but alas, they were putting out the fire with water, got a bit carried away, needed changing and well, there just wasn’t any more time.
There was a bit of an unpleasant awareness of the choice they made to get wet and how this altered their desire to draw. How did that happen they were asking themselves?  I had shared that if they really wanted to get wet they would need to undress themselves and put all their clothes away by themselves or with the help of each other.  They did actually quite well with this but Rhett was a bit beside himself. He just didn’t think he could do it but, you know what? HE DID!!!!   With only a small amount of help and some encouragement.  He got his shoes off, his pants almost off by himself and his clothes on!!!   Layton kept saying that she didn’t like to get dirty as she would, almost simultaneously, go in the mud.  Ariel was so quick to help out today and take care of her changing needs. Alara too.  Io was a bit distressed about not being able to change her clothes straight away and without discovering where her extra clothes were before she stripped down, and Velia went for it with basic ease. Aaron stayed warm and dry all day as he has been sick and he was actually fairly still today. He and I had a good time at the fire experimenting with a different popcorn maker. All the children benefited from our experiment because they got more popcorn!!!
We spent time putting un popped popcorn kernels in the coals and watched them pop, pop pop!
When we first were driving to the park Io said that she saw a thunder cloud. Ariel said she checked the weather in the morning and that couldn’t be possible. I suggested that we keep looking up at the sky all day and see what actually happens, so, we did. We saw the sky get dark, light, dark, light, dark, light ALL DAY LONG!  It got cool and warm, cool and warm, cool and warm and we all just kept watching the sky change and wondering if it really would rain.